The rise of the digital currency

Once just two percent of servers run on blockchain technology, Bank of America research analyst Kash Rangan predicts the market for blockchain technology will be worth $7 billion.  Nine companies have been identified as likely to benefit significantly from the technology including Amazon and Microsoft.  As reported by  CNBC , Rangan didn’t put a time stamp on his predictions but also included technology giants Oracle, IBM, Salesforce, and VMware as others set to benefit. “Many blockchain use cases have been identified, but full products/services have not yet been built out and are not used in production,” said Rangan. The analyst says that Amazon Web Services (AWS) will benefit “from incremental cloud services demand from blockchain implementation, while improved supply chain tracking should make Amazon’s retail operations more efficient.”  Rangan also predicts that blockchain will improve software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms and that blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) will eme

Concerns about the lack of robust real-time and historical market surveillance capabilities A Malta-based cryptocurrency  exchange has been referred to the US department of financial services for potential violation of New York’s virtual currency regulations. The New York State Attorney General said Binance, Gate.io and Kraken had been referred to the US department for financial services after an investigation into whether those platforms accepted trade from within New York state. Binance, touted as the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, relocated to Malta earlier this year amid hype by the government. Malta’s embrace of blockchain technology led it to become a hub for cryptocurrency exchanges. Prime Minister Joseph Muscat had welcomed Binance to Malta in a Tweet. As part of a study into the cryptocurrency market, the New York Attorney General sought the voluntary participation of 13 cryptocurrency exchanges in a fact-finding inquiry into the policies and practices of vi

In ICO terms 2018 got off to a roaring start — but growing regulatory action internationally has seen a marked decline in capital raised during Q2 — moving many issuers and investors to the inevitable conclusion that compliant Security Tokens are the only viable way forward for the sector During 2017 and what might be considered the ICO ‘heyday’ it is fair to say that the legal status of many of these capital raising initiatives wasn’t a priority for founders — if it was considered at all. As the year wore on, however, the size of the raises began attracting attention beyond the crypto-world — ultimately capturing the interest of financial authorities like the SEC and its jurisdictional counterparts worldwide — many of which began issuing stern warnings about regulatory compliance and investor protection legislation. Alerted to the fact that their raises might be in breach of local securities laws, ICO startups began claiming they were actually issuing ‘utility’ tokens — oft

Today in the opening keynote at the SF Blockchain Week Epicenter, Oasis Labs announced a partnership with a16zcrypto, Accel, Binance Labs, Pantera Capital and Polychain Capital to launch a first-of-its kind program to accelerate privacy-first computing on blockchain. The Oasis Startup Hub will provide innovative developers with guidance from leading investors, hands-on technical support and early access to breakthrough technology to enable new applications which feature the security, privacy and scalability benefits of Oasis Labs’s decentralized protocol. “As high-profile privacy failures proliferate, the value of applications that put data protection at the heart of operations will only continue to soar,” said Jake Flomenberg, partner at Accel. “Oasis is taking an important step toward building a vibrant community committed to addressing serious issues in today’s computing landscape. Together, we’re helping unleash the power of data through innovative applications which responsi

PricewaterhouseCoopers, the top accounting firm better known as PwC, is backing a cryptocurrency—specifically, a so-called stablecoin backed by the U.S. dollar. The accounting firm is partnering with Cred, a decentralized lending startup that’s developing a new stablecoin pegged to the dollar, PwC announced Monday. PwC will offer its accounting expertise to ensure Cred’s dollar-backed coin “can provide 100% transparency and value substantiation,” the firm said in a statement. To hear PwC tell it, a lack of trust in stablecoins—and the existence of the dollar reserves backing them—has been keeping many potential investors out of cryptocurrency entirely. According to PwC, making the dollar reserves backing stablecoins fully auditable will “usher in the next 100 million users of crypto assets.” PwC is just the latest major firm to jump on the stablecoin bandwagon, joining  companies like IBM  and  venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz,  who see the coins as a digital proxy for the

How are technological advances changing the landscape of the money transfer industry? That’s the focus of the upcoming  Global Money Transfer Summit , being held Oct 16 and 17 in London and hosted by  IAMTN . During two information-packed days, attendees will hear from a range of  speakers  that include CEOs of money transfer organizations, regulators, leaders in blockchain technology, compliance experts, global policy makers and more.  How do money transfer organizations need to evolve to adapt to new technologies while managing to stay ahead of new disruptive models and other challenges? A panel of leaders at global money transfer organizations will tackle those questions. On the insurance front, an executive from AXA Insurance in Paris, France will speak about his company’s innovative program to designed to provide insurance to migrant workers via partnership with remittance companies. Representatives of the Abu Dhabi Global Market will discuss cryptocurrency and the status of